Counterfeiting, tampering, and product diversion account for nearly a half-trillion dollars in worldwide business losses every year. While these business losses are staggering, public trust is also declining as a result of these problems. News stories documenting problems such as black market fraud, theft, gray market goods, and product tampering contribute to the dwindling public trust in the authenticity of goods and services.
Marks incorporating a multiplicity of microparticles (“microparticle marks”) have been used in the past to combat counterfeiting, tampering, and product diversion. Microparticles have been used for identifying and authenticating many types of materials and objects, including the use of microparticles directly in bulk materials (e.g., fertilizer, chemicals, paints, oils, plastics, pigments, clays, fertilizers, and explosives), the use of marks incorporating a multiplicity of microparticles on or in containers for prepackaged materials (e.g., shampoo, conditioner, lotion, motor oils, and pharmaceuticals) and the use of marks incorporating a multiplicity of microparticles on individual product units (e.g. stereos, cameras, computers, videocassette recorders (VCRs), furniture, motorized vehicles, and livestock).
Since the late 1970's, multi-layered color-coded microparticles specifically have been used to covertly mark materials and objects. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,053,433 and 4,390,452 and GB Patent No. 1,568,699 describe multi-layered color coded particles for marking articles. Specifically, U.S. Pat. No. 4,053,433 describes a method of marking a substance with microparticles encoded with an orderly sequence of visually distinguishable colored segments detectable with a microscope or other magnifying device. GB Patent No. 1,568,699 describes systems for making microparticles of layered colored material, which have generally parallel flat surfaces with irregular broken edges there between, enabling visualization of the code.
Other examples of multi-layered color-coded microparticles are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,647,649 and 6,455,157, wherein each describes methods for generating microparticle codes from multi-layered color-coded microparticles. Additional types of microparticles are described in DE Patent No. 19,614,174 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,606,927. DE Patent No. 19,614,174 describes a process for producing multi-layered microparticles by forming a laminate sheet of colored layers and crushing the sheet. The individual marking layers are applied by a printing process, by bronzing, by spray painting, or by roll coating. U.S. Pat. No. 4,606,927 describes microparticles encased in a transparent solid matrix obtained by hardening a liquid adhesive.
While multi-layered color-coded microparticle marks have been useful in tamper and counterfeit detection, verification of articles using such marks has been a manual visual process using a microscope or other magnification system to permit a user to confirm the existence of the expected type of multi-layer color-coded microparticles within an area on an object where the microparticle mark is expected.
Automated reader systems have been developed for single expression microparticles, such as the readers for thermal or laser activated microparticle powders as described, for example, in PCT Pub. No. WO2005/104008A1. These single expression microparticle readers generally rely on both the “invisibility” of the microparticle until the microparticle is activated by the reader and the random location of the microparticles dispersed relative to a registration mark to create a unique code for the security and authentication purposes. Although such automated reader systems for identifying random patterns of single expression microparticles can be useful, the significantly higher level of complexity associated with automatically reading anything other than the presence and/or location of single expression microparticle marks has so far stymied the development of automated readers for multi-layer multi-color microparticle marks.
Using a unique set of multi-layered color-coded microparticles, such as those described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,647,649 and 6,455,157, a unique microparticle code can be created for a given article. While the multi-layered color-coded microparticles can be used in this manner to place a unique identification mechanism on individual articles, there is an inherent practical, albeit large, limit to the number of microparticle codes that can be written. To create more codes using multi-layered color-coded microparticles, additional layers, colors, or microparticles must be included in the microparticle set, wherein each of these can add cost and complexity to the system. As a result, a limit can exist at which the coding in this fashion can become impractical.
While the multi-layered color-coded microparticles described above can represent a first-level of security that is generally useful in protecting against counterfeiting, tampering, and product diversion, it can be anticipated that a day will come in which counterfeiters, tamperers, and diverters will attempt to breach this security level by recreating the multi-layered color-coded microparticles and placing counterfeit marks incorporating the multiplicity of microparticles on counterfeit or diverted products.
One attempt to create an additional level of security using multi-layered color-coded microparticles is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,309,690, which describes a system and method that recognizes the random distribution of microparticles that occurs in applied microparticle marks. Using the method described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,309,690, by manually comparing an image of the mark taken at the time of the marking with an image of a mark manually obtained at a later time, one can attempt to determine whether the individual article is authentic.
While the method described by U.S. Pat. No. 6,309,690 can generally enable authenticating individual articles, it can suffer from a number of disadvantages. For example, the method requires the cumbersome manual comparison of an image of the mark taken at the time of the marking with an image of the mark obtained at a later time to determine whether the individual article is authentic. As data volume increases rapidly with increasing image resolution, the storage of very large amounts of data can be necessary for maintaining the images. Additionally, remote access to the images for field authentication requires the transfer of the entire image data to or from the field location, which can add substantial cost and time to the authentication process. Thus, the process described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,309,690 is generally not practical for real-time, large-volume applications because of the expensive and time-consuming nature of the process. Importantly, the method described by U.S. Pat. No. 6,309,690 first requires an identification of the article (i.e., one looking at a mark on an article must be told the identity of the article) before determining whether an article is authentic. If one does not know the identity of the article in the first place, then the authentication method described by U.S. Pat. No. 6,309,690 cannot be performed.
There is therefore a need for an improved anti-counterfeiting and anti-fraud marking system, apparatus, and method for identifying and authenticating articles that can overcome the inherent deficiencies with conventional marking systems and also enable serialization of articles over and above the microparticle code-formulation achievable with unique collections of multi-layered color-coded microparticles